Over the past few days, I’ve been doing some research for an easy-to-use web-based open-sourced content management system. The basic system needs to be usable by several people and needs to be simple. In the process, though, I have learned that simplicity is hard to do. The main challenge comes from the fact that most software developers are too knowledgeable to really create easy to use system. As a result, new features are created daily for open source tools but little attention is being paid to making the overall tools easy to use. The challenge is that simple interfaces are hard to design and largely present a challenge that is woefully underappreciated. A good interface is one that is so in tune with user expectations that it becomes essentially invisible. As a result, the balance in product development always happens between fewer features with an easier to use interface vs. large feature set with increased complexity. Weblog tools seem to manage a careful balance between the two but are unfortunately tied to a particular model, based on entries and list of entries. More complex sites, with different sections and other functionality do not fall well within that mold. Let me…